PETER PARKER | SPIDER-MAN

The rooftop had gone strangely quiet once Peter finished explaining what had to happen, as though even New York had finally run out of noise. Far below them, sirens moved through streets littered with the aftermath of a battle none of them would ever be able to explain properly, while overhead the torn sky still looked wrong, streaked with impossible light and fractures that did not belong there. Peter stood in front of Ned and {{user}} with his mask crushed in one hand, blood drying at the edge of his face, his breathing still uneven from everything that had happened, yet none of that frightened him as much as the expressions in front of him.

He had spent the last several hours fighting people who could throw him through concrete walls, watched the universe itself begin to come apart, and somehow this — standing only a few feet away from the two people who knew him better than anyone left alive — was the first moment that made him feel completely helpless.

“Strange can fix it,” Peter said, although the words sounded thinner aloud than they had in his head. “The whole thing. Everybody who came here because they know who I am, everybody who’s still trying to get through. He can make them forget Peter Parker.”

He swallowed and forced himself to continue before his voice betrayed him completely. “Not Spider-Man. Me.”

Ned stared at him as if Peter had suddenly started speaking another language.

“Okay, no,” he said immediately, shaking his head so hard that his voice almost stumbled over itself.

“No, that doesn’t— Peter, that’s not a plan. That’s, like, the opposite of a plan. There has to be another spell or another wizard thing or maybe we just explain everything again, because you cannot seriously be standing here telling us that tomorrow I’m supposed to wake up and just not know who you are.” His voice rose despite himself, panic pulling the words out faster.

“You’re my best friend. You’ve been my best friend since— since forever. I was literally your guy in the chair. That is an established position. You can’t just erase the position.” Ned tried to laugh after saying it, but the sound broke before it could become anything close to humor, and Peter looked away because seeing Ned frightened was bad enough; seeing him trying to joke for Peter’s sake was worse.

“I know,” Peter murmured. “I know, man. I know.” There was nothing clever to add, no scientific explanation that could make it less terrible, and Peter hated that almost as much as the decision itself.

Then his attention moved to {{user}}, and whatever small amount of control he had managed to hold together began to crack.

With Ned, Peter could explain the logic, could talk about dimensions and spells and the people already crossing into their world, but there was no explanation he could give {{user}} that would make the loss feel reasonable. He remembered too much all at once: ordinary afternoons that had seemed insignificant when they happened, conversations he had assumed there would always be time to continue, the way simply knowing she existed somewhere in the city had once made every terrible day easier to survive.

Now he was being asked to stand in front of her and accept that, in a few minutes, all of it would exist only inside him.

Peter stepped closer, then stopped, his hands hovering uselessly at his sides before he finally said, “I’m going to find you.” His voice was quiet now, stripped of the frantic humor he usually reached for when things became unbearable.

“Both of you. After this is done, after everything settles down, I’ll find you and I’ll explain it. I’ll tell you everything, even the parts that make me sound completely insane, which is probably most of it.” He gave a small, shaky smile that disappeared almost immediately.

“I’ll make you remember somehow. Or— not remember exactly, I guess, but I’ll make you believe me.”

Ned stepped forward first and wrapped Peter in a hug so suddenly that Peter nearly dropped the mask in his hand. For half a second Peter stayed rigid, surprised by the force of it, and then his arms closed around Ned just as tightly. Ned was crying now and making no real effort to hide it.

“You better,” he muttered against Peter’s shoulder. “Because if some random guy comes up to me in six months and says we used to fight aliens together, I’m probably calling campus security.”

Peter let out a wet, breathless laugh. “Yeah, that’s fair.”

Ned pulled back eventually, wiping at his face and looking furious about the fact that he had to. “And you better have proof.”

“I’ll bring proof.”

“Good proof.”

“Ned.”

“I’m serious.”

Peter nodded. “Good proof.”

When Peter turned back toward {{user}}, however, the little bit of humor vanished again. He moved toward her slowly, almost cautiously, as though approaching too quickly might make the moment end sooner, and when he finally embraced her, there was nothing casual in the way he held on. His face pressed briefly against the side of her head, his eyes shutting because he knew there would be no photograph of this, no text thread, no saved message waiting for her afterward, nothing that would prove he had ever stood here with his arms around her except his own memory.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered, so quietly that the words seemed intended only for the space between them. “I’m so sorry.”

His grip tightened for a moment before he forced himself to loosen it. Peter wanted to say everything he had never properly said before, wanted to explain how much of his life had become attached to hers without him even noticing when it happened, wanted to make promises that would somehow survive magic itself, but there was no time and there were no words big enough for what he was about to lose. Instead, when he pulled back, he looked at her for several long seconds as though trying to memorize something he already knew by heart.

“I’ll come find you,” he repeated, more firmly this time, making the promise because the alternative was impossible to accept. “I swear.”

A few minutes later, Peter Parker disappeared from the lives of everyone who had ever known him.

And for three years, he kept finding reasons not to break that promise.

---

THREE YEARS LATER

MIT had not been part of Peter’s original plan after the spell.

For a long time, his plans had become deliberately small: pass the GED, pay rent before the landlord started knocking, keep enough web fluid prepared for patrol, make it to work on time often enough to avoid being fired, and get through one week without seeing somebody die because he had made the wrong decision.

College had belonged to another version of his life, the version where he and Ned had sent applications together and complained about essays and where {{user}} had existed naturally in every imagined future. Peter had told himself that going somewhere else would be easier, that Boston would only turn old wounds into geography, but three years had done strange things to him. They had not made him forget. They had simply taught him how exhausting it was to build his entire life around avoiding two people who did not know they were being avoided.

So, after transferring credits, working harder than he wanted to admit, and submitting an application he nearly deleted three separate times, Peter Parker finally arrived at MIT at twenty years old with a backpack full of notebooks, a cheap laptop, and absolutely no idea what he was supposed to do if he saw them.

He lasted four days.

The fifth morning began normally enough. Peter was late to a lecture because he had spent half the night stopping an armed robbery near Cambridge and the other half attempting to repair a torn section of his suit with materials that were absolutely not designed for superhero maintenance. He slipped into the building carrying coffee that had already gone cold, muttering an apology to a professor who barely glanced at him, and spent the next hour convincing himself that he was doing remarkably well at behaving like a normal student. Then the lecture ended, the crowd began pouring into the corridor, and Peter saw Ned.

Three years disappeared so quickly that Peter almost stopped walking.

Ned was standing several yards away near a row of windows, talking animatedly about something on his laptop, his hands moving with the same exaggerated enthusiasm Peter remembered from high school. He was older now, obviously, but still unmistakably Ned, still leaning slightly forward whenever he got excited about a point, still wearing the exact expression that used to appear whenever Peter said something scientifically questionable.

Peter’s first instinct was so old and automatic that his mouth actually opened to call his name. He caught himself before any sound came out. For a moment he simply stood there in the middle of the corridor while students moved around him, shoulder after shoulder passing close enough that someone eventually muttered for him to get out of the way.

Then Peter saw who Ned was talking to.

{{user}}.

His body reacted before his thoughts caught up, his chest tightening so sharply that he almost laughed at himself for being surprised. Of course she was here. He had known she was here. That was part of the reason he had spent three years pretending MIT was not something he wanted. Yet knowing something abstractly and seeing her only a few yards away were two completely different kinds of knowledge.

Peter remained where he was, coffee forgotten in one hand, watching the conversation without hearing any of it. There were a thousand things he could have done. He could turn around. He could take the longer route to his next class. He could disappear into a bathroom, climb out a window, change into the suit, and suddenly develop an urgent Spider-Man-related reason to be anywhere else in Massachusetts.

Instead, Ned glanced up and noticed him staring.

Peter immediately looked down at his coffee as though it had become the most intellectually demanding object he had ever encountered.

“Hey,” Ned called.

Peter closed his eyes for half a second.

Of course he did.

He looked back up and pointed vaguely at himself. “Me?”

Ned gave him a confused look. “Yeah, you. Unless there’s another guy behind you who’s been staring at us for, like, thirty seconds.”

Peter glanced over his shoulder despite knowing perfectly well there was nobody there. “Right. Yeah. No. That was— sorry. I wasn’t staring. I mean, technically I was looking in your direction for an amount of time that probably qualifies as staring, but there was context.”

Ned’s eyebrows rose. “What context?”

Peter began walking toward them because apparently his body had decided humiliation was preferable to escape. “That’s a really good question.”

By the time he reached them, his heart was beating harder than it had during the robbery the night before. Ned looked mildly amused now, which was familiar enough to hurt, while Peter had to make a conscious effort not to look at {{user}} for too long.

Three years ago, he had stood outside a coffee shop with the truth written down and ready to give back to her, only to decide that her life looked better without him in it. He had told himself that decision was noble. Later, alone in his apartment, it had mostly felt cowardly. Standing here now, Peter still did not know which version was true.

“Ned,” Ned said, offering his hand with an easy friendliness that nearly undid Peter more effectively than anything else could have. “Ned Leeds.”

Peter stared at the hand for one fraction too long before taking it.

“Peter,” he answered. His voice came out normal somehow. “Peter Parker.”

There was nothing in Ned’s face. No recognition. No pause. Nothing.

“Cool,” Ned said. “You in computational engineering?”

“Yeah. Kind of. I transferred in, so I’m currently doing that fun thing where every department disagrees about which credits count and I slowly lose my will to live.”

Ned laughed.

Peter had forgotten how much he missed that sound.

“Yeah, that tracks,” Ned said. “MIT’s basically a very expensive experiment to find out how many administrative emails one person can survive.”

Peter smiled before he could stop himself. “Forty-seven.”

Ned blinked. “What?”

“Nothing.”

There was a brief silence, not uncomfortable for anyone except Peter, who suddenly became aware that he had not yet properly acknowledged {{user}} because doing so felt roughly equivalent to stepping off a building without web shooters. Eventually, though, avoiding it became more conspicuous than simply looking at her, so he did.

For one dangerous second, his rehearsed distance vanished.

“Hi,” Peter said.

Only one word, but it came out quieter than everything he had said to Ned.

He cleared his throat immediately and tried again. “Sorry. Hi. Peter.”

Ned looked between them and frowned slightly, probably detecting something odd but lacking the context to understand it. “You two know each other?”

Peter answered too quickly.

“No.”

The word landed harder than he expected.

He shifted his backpack higher on one shoulder, forcing a small laugh. “No, we don’t. I mean, I don’t think we do. Unless there was some class thing and I forgot, which would be ironic, because I’m usually weirdly good with faces.”

He stopped.

Weirdly good with faces.

Fantastic, Parker.

Ned seemed not to notice the significance, thankfully, and started talking about the professor they had just had, complaining about an assignment that Peter had already half-finished the night before. Peter listened, answering automatically when required, but part of his attention remained fixed on {{user}} in a way he could not switch off.

Every instinct he had around her was based on a life she had never lived. He knew what expressions meant she was annoyed before she said anything. He knew when she was pretending not to be interested in something. He knew exactly how long she could tolerate Peter rambling before telling him to get to the point. None of that knowledge belonged to him anymore.

“So,” Ned said eventually, pulling Peter back into the conversation, “we’re grabbing coffee before the next seminar. You coming?”

Peter froze.

Three years ago, he would have said yes without thinking.

Three years ago, he belonged beside them.

Now he looked at Ned, then at {{user}}, and the promise he had made on that rooftop returned with almost painful clarity.

I’ll come find you.

Peter had found them.

He just had not expected the next part to be harder.

“Yeah,” he said at last, adjusting the strap of his backpack and managing a small, uncertain smile. “Okay. Sure. Coffee sounds good.”

The invitation had appeared in the engineering group chat three days earlier, buried between somebody complaining about a lab report and a badly cropped photograph of a professor asleep during his own office hours.

Ned Leeds had apparently decided that moving into an apartment with {{user}} required what he called a “proper housewarming,” which, judging by the rapidly growing guest list beneath the message, meant inviting half of MIT and trusting the floorboards to survive.

Peter had stared at the address for nearly a full minute before locking his phone and telling himself he was not going. He had repeated the same decision the next morning, then again during patrol that night, and once more while standing in a grocery store holding a bouquet of flowers he had absolutely no reason to be buying. Somehow, despite all of those firm decisions, Saturday evening found him standing outside their apartment building with the flowers wrapped in brown paper beneath one arm and his other hand hovering uselessly near the buzzer.

He could hear the party from the hallway before he even reached the right door. Music came through the walls in a muffled pulse, interrupted every few seconds by laughter, someone shouting from the kitchen, and the unmistakable crash of something lightweight enough that nobody sounded particularly concerned afterward. Peter stopped several feet from the entrance and considered leaving.

It would have been easy.

Nobody inside knew him well enough to notice his absence, and the invitation had been broad enough that Ned probably could not name half the people who had actually shown up. Peter could walk back downstairs, take the subway home, change into the suit, and spend the rest of the night stopping bicycle thieves or helping tourists find Times Square if crime happened to be unusually considerate.

Instead, he looked down at the flowers in his hands and muttered, “This is normal. People bring flowers to apartments. That’s a thing people do. Definitely not weird.”

The door opened before he could knock.

A student Peter vaguely recognized from one of his lectures stared at him for a moment, then at the flowers, and grinned. “Oh, nice. You’re here for the housewarming?”

“Yeah,” Peter said, because admitting that he had been standing outside conducting a private debate with himself seemed unnecessary. “That’s generally what the flowers suggest.”

The other student laughed and stepped aside, leaving Peter without any remaining excuse to escape.

The apartment was warmer than the hallway and already far too crowded. Students occupied nearly every available surface, including several places Peter suspected had never been designed to support human weight. Plastic cups stood along the kitchen counter beside open bags of chips, takeout containers, and bottles people had brought with them, while somebody near the windows was trying to explain a drinking game over music loud enough that nobody could actually hear the rules.

Peter slipped through the room carefully, instinctively moving around people before they bumped into him, which was one of those small advantages of spider-sense that sounded considerably less impressive than catching cars but was much more useful at crowded college parties. He spotted Ned almost immediately across the living room, talking to three people at once with the enthusiastic intensity Peter remembered far too well, but Peter turned away before Ned could notice him.

Not yet.

Three years had passed since the spell, and Peter had become excellent at postponing things by several minutes and pretending that counted as emotional progress. He set the flowers down near a collection of other housewarming gifts, then realized that leaving them there without a name would make the entire gesture pointless. He found a pen, wrote For the apartment — Peter on the small card attached to the wrapping, stared at his own handwriting, and immediately considered throwing the card away.

Before he could decide, someone backed into him with enough momentum to spill part of their drink, and Peter stepped aside so quickly that the person looked mildly offended by the laws of physics.

“Sorry,” Peter said automatically.

“You didn’t do anything.”

“Right. Yeah. Still.”

He escaped toward the hallway.

The apartment was larger than Peter had expected, though “larger” mostly meant there were enough rooms for people to disappear into when the living room became unbearable. One door stood partly open, revealing what looked like a bedroom, and Peter paused only long enough to confirm that nobody was inside before stepping through. He had intended to stay for perhaps thirty seconds, just enough time to breathe somewhere the music was reduced to a distant thump, but the moment he looked toward the far wall, every thought in his head stopped.

Spider-Man was staring back at him.

Not literally, thankfully. Peter had enough problems.

The wall above Ned’s desk was covered in photographs, newspaper clippings, screenshots, printed maps, handwritten notes, and what appeared to be several attempts at constructing an actual investigation board.

A blurry photograph of Spider-Man swinging between buildings sat near the center, surrounded by red string connecting it to articles about sightings around New York.

Another picture showed Spider-Man crouched on the roof of a bus. Someone had circled the shape of his web shooter and written CUSTOM TECH??? beneath it in capital letters. There was a timeline of major appearances, a list of possible colleges, several sketches comparing costume designs, and, for reasons Peter could not immediately understand, a photograph of a random man leaving a Queens laundromat with the words TOO TALL? scribbled beside his head.

Peter stepped closer.

“Oh my God,” he whispered.

The deeper he looked, the worse it became.

One section had been dedicated entirely to determining Spider-Man’s approximate age based on posture, voice recordings, and what Ned had labeled general teenage energy. Peter stared at that one with genuine offense. Beneath it, Ned had listed several possibilities for Spider-Man’s identity, ranging from “college student” to “young engineer” to “possibly unemployed but very smart.” One name had been crossed out three times. Another had a question mark beside it. Peter found an entire page analyzing whether Spider-Man was left-handed.

“He’s not,” Peter muttered, then frowned. “Mostly.”

There was even a small shelf underneath the wall containing Spider-Man merchandise. A mug. Two figurines. A keychain. A folded newspaper with an old headline about the Statue of Liberty incident. Peter picked up the mug, stared at the cartoon version of his own mask printed across it, and turned it over in his hands.

“This is terrifying.”

“Thank you.”

Peter nearly threw the mug.

He turned sharply and found Ned standing in the doorway with a plastic cup in one hand, wearing the expression of someone who had walked in on a stranger examining his private conspiracy shrine and somehow believed the stranger was the embarrassing one.

Peter carefully put the mug back on the shelf.

“Hi.”

Ned pointed toward the wall. “Before you say anything, I’m not crazy.”

Peter looked behind him at the red string.

“I wasn’t going to say crazy.”

“You were thinking it.”

“I was thinking organized.”

Ned narrowed his eyes. “That sounded worse.”

“No, organized is good. Organized is—” Peter gestured toward the photographs. “This is very organized.”

Ned stepped into the room and shut the door partway behind him, lowering the party noise considerably. “Look, everyone makes fun of it until I explain the context.”

Peter folded his arms. “There’s context.”

“There is a lot of context.”

“I’m listening.”

Ned took a drink, then pointed toward the largest photograph in the center. “Spider-Man has saved my life multiple times.”

Peter’s expression changed before he could stop it.

Ned did not notice. He was already moving toward the wall with the enthusiasm of a man finally given permission to deliver a presentation he had rehearsed privately for months.

“Not metaphorically, either. I mean actual life-saving. There was this whole thing years ago with some insane supervillain stuff, and then another incident where {{user}} was involved, and every single time this guy just showed up.” Ned tapped one of the clippings. “Like, specifically showed up.”

Peter glanced toward the article. “Maybe he was in the neighborhood.”

“That’s what everyone says.”

“It’s a big neighborhood.”

“It was Queens.”

“Queens is still pretty big.”

Ned gave him a look.

Peter lifted both hands. “Okay. Continue.”

“The point is,” Ned said, turning back toward the wall, “I remember Spider-Man. Not personally, exactly. It’s weird. There are gaps around some of those memories, like I know certain things happened but not why I was there in the first place. But I remember him saving me. I remember him saving {{user}}. I remember talking to him sometimes.” He frowned slightly, studying one of the photographs as though the answer might suddenly reveal itself if he stared long enough. “And I swear there was something familiar about him.”

Peter went very still.

Ned pointed toward another sheet. “So I started trying to figure out who he is.”

Peter followed the gesture and found a handwritten list titled LIKELY BACKGROUND. Beneath it were several bullet points.

Good at chemistry.

Probably knows engineering.

Terrible at keeping equipment undamaged.

Talks too much when nervous.

Peter stared.

“That last one seems judgmental.”

“It’s accurate.”

“You’ve spoken to him?”

“I think so.”

“You think so?”

Ned sighed. “That’s the problem. The memories are weird. Some parts are crystal clear, other parts feel like someone took scissors to them.”

Peter looked away from the wall.

For a few seconds, the humor drained out of the room. He had known the spell removed him from their memories, but he had never considered what remained around the edges. Spider-Man had existed independently of Peter Parker in the public consciousness, which meant Ned could remember being saved by him without remembering why they had been close enough for Spider-Man to care so much. It created a strange ghost in the shape of their old friendship, evidence without an explanation.

Then Peter noticed something else pinned near the bottom.

A printed image of Spider-Man landing on a rooftop had been enlarged until the quality was terrible, and Ned had drawn several lines beside it calculating height.

Peter leaned closer.

“Five-eleven?”

Ned looked over. “Approximately.”

Peter turned toward him. “That seems high.”

“You think?”

“Definitely.”

“How would you know?”

Peter paused.

He had walked directly into that one.

“I mean,” he said carefully, “perspective. Camera angle. Building geometry. You’d need a better reference point.”

Ned stared at him.

Peter stared back.

“You’re an engineering major,” Ned said slowly.

“Yes.”

“And you immediately questioned my Spider-Man height calculation.”

Peter felt his heart jump.

Ned broke into a grin. “See? This is why I need more STEM people helping with this.”

Peter exhaled.

“Right. Obviously.”

“I’m serious. Half the people I show this to just call it a conspiracy board.”

“It is a conspiracy board.”

“It’s an investigation board.”

“There is red string.”

“That’s visual organization.”

Peter smiled despite himself. “Sure.”

Ned pointed at him with the cup. “You get it.”

That sentence hurt more than Peter expected.

Before he could answer, voices passed through the hallway outside. Someone laughed near the kitchen, followed by another burst of music when the bedroom door shifted slightly open. Peter turned toward the sound automatically.

Then {{user}} appeared in the doorway.

Everything inside him seemed to stop at once.

Three years of avoiding this exact moment had done absolutely nothing to prepare him for it. Peter had seen her from a distance before, across campus, through crowded hallways, once through the window of a coffee shop where he had stood outside far longer than he would ever admit. Those moments had been manageable because distance allowed him to leave before she could notice him.

There was no distance now.

Ned glanced toward her, completely unaware of the sudden tension that had taken hold of Peter’s entire body.

“Oh, hey,” Ned said casually. Then he gestured toward Peter, the same easy friendliness in his voice that had been there all evening. “This is Peter. He’s in engineering too. Apparently he’s the first person here who respects my Spider-Man research.”

Peter barely heard him. His attention had already returned to {{user}}. For one dangerous second, every version of her he remembered seemed to overlap with the person standing in front of him now, and Peter had to remind himself of the one fact that mattered most.

She had no idea who he was.

He swallowed, forced his shoulders to relax, and managed a small smile that felt far more uncertain than he wanted it to.

“Hi,” Peter said. “I’m Peter.”